Project Description
Smith Wedding
For the wedding of Georgina and Adam on Saturday 17th February, XO Surrey Wedding Band travelled to the beautiful Wotton House, Dorking. A huge thank you to the new Mr and Mrs Smith, we had such a great evening celebrating with you!
The Venue
Wotton House is a De Vere hotel situated in Dorking, Surrey – a 17th century house, beautifully refurbished into a chic, yet traditional wedding venue. We’ve been lucky enough to visit Wotton House a few times, and know that the ceremony room is absolutely stunning, complete with pillars and the perfect aisle. Theceremony can also be held outside in the beautiful Italian gardens, which is also where the drinks reception is held on a nice day. The wedding breakfast and evening reception are held in the Evelyn Suite, which is perfect to host a large wedding, and hold a great party! An exclusive bar is usually set up for the wedding party in the suite. The room can lend itself to any theme, and Georgina and Adam had chosen different gin bottles for their table centrepieces, which we loved!
The Set Up
We pulled up to Wotton House at 4:30 – as we’d been here before, we knew the drill! As the wedding breakfast is in the same room as our evening performing space, Wotton House has space in a room nearby for gear to be loaded into. This is great for us, as we can get parts set up before the room is ready and save on precious party time! Once our stuff was loaded and sorted as well as the space could hold, we headed to the bar to put in our dinner orders! After some lovely food, and a quick change, the guests vacated the suite to the nearby bar, and we could get going. The venue staff cleared the performance area, we carried all our gear into the suite and got everything into position. The final thing to do was a quick sound check, and then we were ready for the evening to begin!
The First Dance
Crash Into Me – Dave Matthews Band
Georgina and Adam had chosen a special song for them for their first dance of the evening – ‘Crash Into Me’ by the Dave Matthews Band. The song is a beautiful, heart felt number and was ideal for the romantic atmosphere, with the couple’s friends and family gathered around the dance floor. Part way through the song, Georgina and Adam encouraged everyone to join them, and the dance floor was quickly filled with dancing couples – everyone was ready for the party to begin!
Live Party Band
We continued with the classic Stevie Wonder number ‘Isn’t She Lovely’, the perfect sing-along ‘9 to 5’ by Dolly Parton and the Jackson 5 hit, ‘ABC’. We find starting the night with some classic songs works really well, as everyone can get involved! We then played a favourite combination, the XO Disco Medley Set, to finish the first set of the night.
The second set included a real mixture of songs, starting with Cee-Lo Green’s ‘Forget You’, bringing the crowd back to the dance floor. Some highlights from the set included the upbeat ‘Pencil Full Of Lead’ by Paolo Nutini, ‘Ironic’ by Alannis Morrisette (a favourite for me!) and ‘All The Small Things’ by Blink 182 – plenty of air guitars in sight! To really get the crowd singing, we finished the second set with the famous ‘Delilah’, leaving everyone wanting more!
For the third and final set, we kicked off with our tried and tested XO Party Medley. We love playing ‘24K Magic’ by Bruno Mars, it always gets people on their feet! ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift always goes down well, as well as the classic Whitney Houston track ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’! Mr and Mrs Smith had requested a song for us to play towards the end of the night – Michael Buble’s ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’, so with them both on the packed dance floor, we began. Everyone loved the song, especially the newly married couple! Before long it was time the wrap up the evening and we finished with a favourite – The Beatles, ‘Hey Jude’. In our experience, it is physically impossible to not sing (or shout) along with this famous tune!
With the guests begging for more, we couldn’t resist their charms and played one more song – ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis. This was the perfect song to finish the night. With everyone crowded in a circle, we could definitely feel the love!
It was so lovely to be back at Wotton House, one of our favourite venues to play at! We hope to be back soon.We’d like to say a massive thank you to the new Mr and Mrs Smith for having us as their wedding entertainment. We feel so honoured to be included in such a special day!
Congratulations again, all our love and best of luck for everything in the future!